Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Make Your Favourite Vocal Artist Sing Within V-synth

The V-synth can sample and stretch pitch across the keys without losing voice characteristics. Untreated vocal samples work very well for this as do one note instrumentals (like wind instruments). You can use this ability to take your favourite singer and make them a patch. This just an overview. If you don't know how to sample, read the manual. Lets get started.

What you need:

An acapella vocal sample or MP3, prefferabley with little or no background noise

1. First find your acapella music containing your favourite singer. If it is an MP3, convert it to a wave file. (.WAV) using your computer.

2. Find a section where the singer hits a sustained note. This will be the basis for the patch. If it is too short we can't loop it.

3. Using your computer, trim down the size of the file to a specific section so you can transfer it to the V-synth memory. You don't have to chop it precisely-yet. If you sampled it straight to the V-synth, trim it down a bit.

4. Make sure your sample is imported / saved if you havent yet.

5. Go to the Edit button under Sample menu, while your sample is selected. Find the start and end of the note. Hopefully it is a long, sustained note. Trim the start and end of the note, include the attack.

6. Normalize the sample using the drop down menu.

7. Go to the Encode button. Since this is a solo sound, and not a decay instrument (percussion), or ensemble we will encode it in SOLO mode.

8. Loop the sample properly. We need to loop the vocal in an area that does not include the attack. Go to the FWD loop TAB. Select the beginning slider and move it to after the attack. Turn on LOOP and hit play. Adjust the Loop End slider. It is important to play around with these sliders so we get a vocal that sounds like it is looping realistically. If the attack of the voice is still heard, it will be repeated and sound mechanical. ZOOM in and find places in the sample where the voice waveform is similiar. Set the start and end loop points precisely at the same point in the waveform. They may not look exactly the same, just try to guess. Your ears will do a better job of finding an area within the sample that will loop properly.

9. Save the sample. Double check that you indeed used FWD Loop point tab, and not the loop button in the main edit tab. (It can be confusing)

10. Open up a new patch.

11. Scroll to find your sample in OSC1

12. Set the sample to a FWD LOOP. Turn on Vari SW. Make sure robot voice is OFF.

13. Set your patch for Portamento ON, MONO, and "13" in the portamento setting under the COM tab. Make the portamento constant rate.

14. Add FX! Reverb and chorus.

Tip: Using the Humanizer filter you can change the sample's vowel! It will sound like AhhhhEeeeeh! Instead of just Ahhhhhh!

Tip: Use the D-beam to modulate your new singing patch! Try an LFO or filter or change the formant (gender).